As a manager, few tasks are more critical than ensuring the efficiency of your team. It's also shocking how even the smallest things can impact your bottom line in a big way.
One aspect that's often considered little is your print process. Most IT teams have simply established a basic system long ago and now just use that as the status quo. If it works, it works—right? Not so much.
Sure. Creating any structured workflow for your business (especially alongside a managed print service) is a great first step. However, a safe, efficient, and smart print workflow is far from a "set it and forget it" project. In actuality, it takes serious and ongoing strategy and action.
After building a streamlined print process, it's critical that IT continually monitors the system's overall health. This includes times when it feels like everything is working just fine.
The truth is that, unless upkeep is constant and your team fully up-to-date with current trends, your system likely has faults. Even if you’ve already designed and implemented a new process for printing and you’ve got every employee following it to a tee, you’re still at risk of inefficiencies.
Here are the three areas we most often see companies with existing processes losing time and money:
1. Not Updating Devices, Software & Technology
Outdated printers and copiers can be slow and unreliable. They’re also often not equipped to deal with the tech needs of today’s workers and the clients that they serve.
While devices bought seven years ago or more may have been at the peak of modernity back then, they're now likely significantly outdated. Many also don't include features like digital document sharing features or wireless capabilities—actions ubiquitous for today's employees.
Older print and copy devices also risk breakdowns or need regular maintenance—both of which can add costs up quickly.
If you’re relying on a fleet that isn’t up-to-date, you risk losing time and money both in your IT department and at your company as a whole. It may be time to replace some of the older, more out-of-date equipment with new devices that can handle employee needs. The short-term investment will pay off in long-term efficiency.
2. Neglected Print and IoT Network Security
Most people don't think about how security threats are hiding within their office's printers, scanners, and copiers—and that’s the problem.
According to the Global Print Security Report, a staggering 60% of data breaches occur through print devices with each breach costing companies an average of $400,000!
Especially as the Internet of things (or IoT) becomes more ingrained into our lives, so does the threat of serious cyberattacks—with devices like printers being at the forefront. Now, it's not just desktops and laptop computers that we need to worry about. It's also the devices connected to our networks that often fade into the background.
If you’re not sure how you’re managing employee data, device hard drives, and printout security, you put your company at risk for a security breach. These can have disastrous consequences for your time, budget, and employee safety.
Thankfully, as hackers find more ways to infiltrate our data, so do the number of effective tools, software, and solutions designed to enhance workplace print security. They're also easier than ever to integrate into your current print process. Some of our favorite ways to boost printer security include:
- Regular employee training
- PaperCut
- HP Security Manager
- Whitelisting
- Laserfiche
If you're unsure how protected your company is, you can get a FREE print security assessment so you can find out just how vulnerable you are.
3. Lack of Proper Transparency
Oftentimes, print costs are broken up and hidden within multiple places such as differing departments, tracking systems, team members, or vendors. Start including the various service agreements, leases, maintenance costs, etc., and you can see why the true costs of your print process are hard to track down.
It really all comes down to a lack of transparency—whether deliberate or not—making your business unable to effectively track print costs. Then, once budget reevaluation season begins, you'll then find yourself needing to spend significant time tracking down where these costs live.
Doing this often takes more than time. Proper monitoring of data and analytics means purchasing robust software and technology. In short, investing in a transparent system often requires an upfront expense of both time and money.
However, it will almost always eventually equate to a positive ROI for your organization.
Want an extra hand in updating and streamlining your print process? We'd love to help! Just schedule a free, no-obligation consolation with one of our experts. We can't wait to become your partners in helping you save time, money, and a lot of headaches.
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